


until your memory is gone

by holtzbabe



Series: all the love I never gave [3]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, this is how their story ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 07:33:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14995931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holtzbabe/pseuds/holtzbabe
Summary: In the end, maybe it isn't up to them. Maybeforeverwas never theirs to promise. Maybeforeverbelongs to the universe, and now the universe has come to take it back.





	until your memory is gone

**Author's Note:**

> Please look at the archive warning before reading further. It is not my intention to trick or surprise anyone reading this. You know what this is. 
> 
> It's how their story ends.

_2059_

In the end, it’s not Erin who leaves.

It starts in the winter of Jillian’s seventy-seventh year. They’re walking hand-in-hand through Hamilton Park. It’s been a daily ritual of theirs ever since they moved back to Battle Creek.

“I was talking to Dana yesterday,” Jillian says. “Did you hear that Will got in a fight?”

Erin frowns and glances at her. Her breath fogs in front of her in the January air. “What? At work?”

Jillian laughs. “Work? You mean daycare?”

Erin stops and jerks Jillian to a stop as well.

“Sorry?”

“Daycare?” Jillian repeats with a grin. “It’s a place where small children go.”

“Oh,” Erin says, comprehension dawning, “did you mean Joe?”

“Of course! Who’d you think I meant?”

“You said Will!” Erin starts walking again. “You can’t blame me for being confused.”

Jillian laughs. “Whoops.” She taps her temple. “Old brain. We’re starting to get it.”

Erin smiles and shakes her head. “So tell me about this daycare fight our grandson got in…”

 

A few weeks later, they’re streaming a movie and Jillian squeezes Erin’s arm.

“We should do a group video call with the girls soon. It’s been too long.”

Erin doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. “Laura and Dana?”

“What? No, the kids.”

Erin squints and pauses the movie, then turns to look at Jillian. “The grandkids?”

“Yes. The girls.”

“What girls?”

“Laura’s girls?”

Erin blinks. “Laura’s girls?”

“Makenna and Renae? Is this _Who’s On First?_ Am I having a stroke?”

“Don’t joke about that,” Erin murmurs. “I’m not…really following. Ken isn’t…Ken hasn’t identified as a girl in…almost twelve years, now?” She would ask if Jillian is joking, but she knows Jillian would never joke about this. She was always better than any of them at remembering the pronoun switch back in the very beginning. In fact, Erin can’t remember her _ever_ messing up.

Jillian stares at her for a few seconds, something strange in her eyes, then blinks and it’s gone. She laughs weakly. “Right. Of course. I just…forgot.”

Erin gapes at her. _Forgot?_

How could she forget something like that?

It’s Jillian. Jillian remembers everything.

 

_2021_

“Hey, buddy,” Jillian says softly, crouching in front of Will’s closet.

He’s sitting inside it with his knees pulled up to his chest, rhythmically slamming his fists on the floor on either side of him and rocking back and forth.

She holds the pillow she brought up in front of her chest. “Why don’t you hit this instead? It’s like your very own punching bag. Do you want to show me your prizewinning punches?”

He doesn’t answer, which she expects.

“You know,” she says, “I think Superman practices his punches on a punching bag, not the floor.”

She waits.

It takes a minute or two, but then without breaking his rhythm, he starts hitting the pillow instead, both fists at once. Jillian smiles.

“Atta boy. Come on, is that all you got? I know you can hit harder than that.”

He does.

Laura told them earlier. It’s the fifth anniversary of their mom dying.

Jillian lets him keep at it, periodically quietly cheering him on when he gets in a good hit.

After some time has passed, he starts to slow. Once he stops, she sits cross-legged across from him and sets the pillow down between them. He looks down at it.

“When my mom died, I wanted to hit stuff all the time because I was mad and sad,” Jillian says. “Especially on July 15th every year. That was the day she died.”

“What did you hit?”

She gives a little half-smile. “Nothing, actually. But I should’ve hit something like a pillow. I didn’t know that I could punch a pillow to help me.”

“Did you cry?”

“Sometimes,” Jillian says. “Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I hid in my room and didn’t want to talk to anybody. Sometimes I wanted to scream very loudly. Sometimes I wanted everything to be quiet. There are lots of things I wanted to do because I was mad and sad about my mom dying, and that was okay.”

Will is still staring at the pillow.

Jillian continues. “I think it’s a great idea to let yourself hit stuff when you’re feeling mad and sad, especially if it’s about your mom, but you can only hit stuff like pillows or punching bags, alright? I don’t want you to hurt your hands. Deal?”

Will nods.

By the next afternoon, she’s purchased and installed a proper punching bag in the basement and has presented Will with a pair of boxing gloves, which he eagerly dons. She stays down there with him and Dana in her playpen, and she teaches him how to throw a solid punch. When Erin gets home from work, she finds them there and takes over with a shake of her head, making sure that Will knows that she’s always punched better than Jillian. Jillian doesn’t argue, just sits back and watches with a smile as Will circles around the punching bag while Erin holds it in place.

 

_2059_

Erin wakes up to an empty bed. She checks the clock on the bedside table and it reads 2:36am.

She tries to go back to sleep, but she always has a hard time falling asleep again when she knows Jillian is out. It’s gotten more frequent recently. She usually returns within the hour, arms purple. Erin knows she never wears a coat out.

After twenty minutes, she sighs and pushes herself out of bed with some effort. She slides on her slippers and wraps herself in her housecoat, then goes to the living room to wait for Jillian to return.

She opens their bedroom door and steps into the hallway, then immediately bumps into something solid. She yelps and feels for the light switch on the wall. The hallway comes alight to expose Jillian standing stock-still in the middle of the hall.

“Oh my goodness,” Erin says, clutching her heart. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”

Jillian slowly turns, and her face is blank, vacant, confused. She doesn’t answer.

Erin’s heart hammers. “Let’s…let’s go back to bed,” she says, voice shaky. She carefully touches Jillian’s shoulder.

That seems to bring her back from wherever she is. She still doesn’t say anything, but she lets Erin guide her back into their room.

Once they’re in bed with the lights off, Erin tries hard to regulate her breathing and not slip into a panic attack. She closes her eyes and wills herself to just fall asleep.

Then she hears it. So quietly that it barely registers, Jillian is crying.

Erin tries to open her mouth and say something, but it’s like her jaw is locked shut.

Eventually, the crying stops and is replaced by Jillian’s breathing evening out.

Erin never does fall back asleep that night.

 

_2017_

Holtz sits cross-legged and plucks blades of grass one by one, letting them fall to the grave from her fingertips. Her legs went numb around a half hour ago.

She’s not sure if her mom can hear her, but she’s talking to her anyway.

“In the…bad years,” she says, “I sometimes had these really terrible thoughts about her. Sometimes I wished…that she had died.” She inhales. “I think it was just a way of coping. Like, I’d sit there and think about how at least if she’d died, she would’ve had an excuse for leaving. I tried to convince myself that that would’ve hurt less.” She glances up at the sun for a second, then back down at the plaque in front of her. “Obviously I know now that that’s bullshit. I’d rather live in a world where she’s alive but gone than a world where she’s dead.”

Across the cemetery, a little girl hops from grave to grave, clearly trying not to step on any of them. Holtz watches her for a bit.

“I guess that’s what it comes down to,” she continues, still watching the young girl. “Erin _is_ my world. More than that. She’s everything. Even when she’s not here. She’s somewhere, and that’s enough to keep going. As long as she’s alive, there’s still a chance I’ll see her again.”

The girl’s father seems to notice what she’s doing and takes her hand to pull her away.

“Maybe that’s stupid and naïve of me,” Holtz says. “Maybe throwing away what I had with Amber was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe you’ve been watching me this whole time and ripping your hair out. Or maybe you’ve been cheering me on and rooting for me and Erin since the beginning because you know that we really are meant to be together.”

She pauses. “Or maybe you’re not here at all, and I’m talking to a box of bones in the ground. I like to hope that there’s an afterlife and that you’re out there somewhere.” She sighs. “But I really don’t know. I just don’t know anymore. If ghosts are real, which I believe they are, then…why have you never come to see me? Why have you never tried? Back in college, when we were doing research and writing the book, we theorized a lot about the spectral plane and how ghosts corporealize, but obviously we never found proof or anything to say for sure how it happens. Maybe you can only come back to this plane if you left it unhappy. I don’t know. I wish I did.”

She reaches forward and brushes her thumb over _1997_ on the plaque.

“I like to think that you were happy overall when you left…but were you okay with dying when you did? Did you accept it? Or were you as upset as I was because you felt like it was too early?” She swallows. “If there was a way for you to see me, I know you would’ve tried to. So maybe it has nothing to do with happiness at all. I just…you know. All those years, all that research, I never stopped thinking about you and how I’d give anything to unlock the secret so I could see you again.”

Silence.

“That’s all,” she says quietly.

 

_2059_

In August, it’s their fortieth wedding anniversary, and Jillian forgets.

She just forgets.

When Erin wakes up, she rolls over and immediately wishes Jillian a happy anniversary.

Jillian’s face turns pale, ashy.

“Yes,” she says quickly, but not quickly enough. “Happy anniversary, my love.”

Erin’s heart beats in her throat. “Did you forget?” she tries to joke, but it comes out small and afraid.

“No! Of course not,” Jillian says. “I would never. This would be number…well, it was…it’s been…”

“Forty years,” Erin says in the smallest voice possible.

Jillian looks shocked. “Forty?”

Forty years ago, and Erin remembers that night like it was yesterday.

“Yep,” Erin says with an encouraging nod, opting to pretend like she didn’t notice how surprised Jillian is. “What a wonderful night that was. It was so beautiful, wasn’t it? With all the lights?”

Jillian nods like a bobblehead. “Of course. The lights…” She reaches out to take Erin’s hand and absentmindedly plays with her fingers. “Where was it? The wedding?” she asks casually.

“At our camp,” Erin says shakily, slowly. “You remember camp, don’t you?”

There’s a pause, and Erin’s heart sinks.

“Of course I do,” Jillian says. “Camp. When we were…”

“In middle school,” Erin finishes after a lengthy pause.

“Right.” Jillian screws her face up, wrinkles around her eyes crinkling. “Middle school…where did we go, again?”

“You—you didn’t go to middle school. You were homeschooled.”

There’s a beat. “Right,” Jillian repeats. “Of course.”

They fall silent.

“We met seventy years ago today,” Erin says. “Do you remember?” Her voice cracks on the final word.

There’s another pause. “It was at the library. You were doing math.”

“Yes,” Erin says eagerly. “Yes, that’s right. The library.”

“How could I ever forget that?” Jillian says with a smile.

Erin laughs weakly, but her heart is still pounding.

 

_2012_

Erin has a bag packed.

She gets out of bed at 4:00am after another night of lying restless and checking her phone every half hour for any new notifications. She’s got Google Alerts set up for _MIT Explosion_ and _Jillian Holtzmann_.

She brews a pot of coffee and takes a seat at her kitchen table with her open laptop. She starts with the Battle Creek Enquirer. She has the obituary page bookmarked.

Her hand shakes as she loads the page. 

She doesn’t have a plan for what will happen if she sees the name she’s looking for. She’s not sure what she’ll do. Where she’ll go.

But she has a bag packed. Ready for her life to change in half a second.

She holds her breath. She scrolls down.

One new obituary. Caroline Mattison, 89. Passed away peacefully in her sleep, surrounded by friends and family.

Erin whispers her condolences, closes out of the webpage, and moves on to the next one.

Her coffee cools without her taking a sip. She keeps one hand on her cell phone, just in case. Her suitcase rests by the door. Just in case.

Two new obituaries on the Cambridge Chronicle.

She holds her breath. She scrolls down.

 

_2059_

Erin sets down two plates of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans on the kitchen table. Jillian eagerly digs into hers.

Erin sits down at the table across from her and picks up her own fork. She lays a napkin across her lap and cuts herself off a piece of meatloaf.

“How was your call with Dana?” she asks.

Jillian pauses for a moment. “Oh, good. She’s doing well.”

“What has she been up to?”

“Well, she’s taken up yoga.”

“She’s always done yoga,” Erin says. She takes a bite of mashed potatoes. “Is it a new kind?”

Jillian frowns and stabs three green beans with her fork. “Yes, must be.”

“Prenatal, maybe?” Erin suggests. She waits to watch Jillian’s reaction.

Jillian drops her fork. “What’s that? Dana’s pregnant?”

“Yes,” Erin says quietly. “She told us in the summer.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” Jillian says. “I know.”

Erin swallows. She grips her fork but doesn’t move to get another bite of food. “What else did you talk about with Dana?”

“Oh, nothing much.”

“How are the kids?”

Jillian shakes her head. “We didn’t talk about Laura and Will.”

Erin licks her lips and stares at her plate. “I meant the twins.”

She glances up and gets a blank stare in return.

Erin clears her throat. “Never mind. So, what did you want to do for Christmas this year? I know we’ve still got a few months to plan, but there’s no hurt in getting started now, right? Do you want to try to go to Boston?” She tries to sound as cheerful as she can.

Jillian perks up and begins to eat again. “Yes please. We haven’t seen Rebecca and Connie in forever.”

Erin freezes. She exhales shakily and slowly sets down her fork and knife.

“I’m sorry, Jillian,” she begins softly. “I’m so sorry.”

And she has to watch the light go out in Jillian’s eyes all over again.

 

_2004_

Erin sits in her parked car and wonders if it was a mistake to come here.

She drove all the way from New Jersey for this, and now she’s debating starting the car and driving right back. She grips the hem of her black dress, nails digging into her thigh, and rests her head on her steering wheel.

What did she do to deserve this?

Her mind instantly supplies her with the answer. She deserves everything bad that’s happened to her since she left. It’s the universe punishing her.

There’s a tapping on the passenger’s side window and she jumps. Her aunt is bent down looking inside. Erin stretches to crank down the window and then sits back.

“Hey, Auntie Lou,” she says glumly.

“We weren’t sure if you were going to come,” she says. “I’m glad you did, sweetheart.”

Erin stares straight ahead through her windshield. “He was my father.”

Louella clucks her tongue. “Come on, we’ll walk in together.”

Erin sighs. So much for leaving. She unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out of the car, not bothering to roll the window back down. She slams the door shut without locking it.

Her aunt joins her and adjusts her gaudy amethyst necklace (which Erin would argue is borderline unacceptable for a funeral, but Louella has never been known for subtlety). She offers Erin her elbow and Erin reluctantly takes it.

They walk slowly towards the church.

 “I’m sorry about your father,” Louella says. “I always told him to stop smoking all those awful chemicals. Look what happened.”

“He was an idiot,” Erin says gruffly. “I don’t really care what happened to him. He deserved it.”

They walk in silence.

“You know, nobody even bothered to tell me that he was sick,” Erin says. “Not even you.”

“I…I thought surely Maggie would have—”

“My mother hasn’t spoken to me in five years,” Erin says tightly.

Louella hangs her head. They stop just outside the church entrance.

“I never did care for my brother-in-law much,” Louella says. “I can’t say he didn’t get what was coming to him.”

Erin eyes her warily.

“All that to say that whatever you’re feeling is alright. It’s okay if you’re feeling conflicted.”

“I’m not conflicted,” Erin says. “I hated him.”

“Well,” Louella says, “you’re here.”

“I’m here,” Erin says, “because I wasn’t given the chance to see him before he died. I’m his _daughter_. I should’ve _been_ there. He didn’t even try to get treatment.”

“You couldn’t have changed that.”

“I could have _tried_. I could have helped him. He should have lived longer than _this_.”

Louella regards her.

“Let’s go inside,” she says finally.

They sit in the very back, crammed in a pew with some people that Erin is pretty sure worked with her father. One lady at the end is bawling loudly. Erin wrinkles her nose and turns her head away.

Her mother is up at the front by the casket. If she’s seen Erin, she gives no indication. She moves to hug Erin’s perverted Uncle Wesley, and stumbles as she does so.

“You know, amethyst is supposed to protect against drunkenness,” Louella says, holding her necklace like a cross.

Erin glances at the purple stone. It reminds her of a bruise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Louella tips her head in her sister’s direction. “You’d think she’d have some dignity. Oh, Margaret.”

Erin looks back at her mother. “She’s drunk?”

The thought infuriates her like nothing else. She’s turned a blind eye all her life, but this is inexcusable if it’s true.

Then her mother looks over Wesley’s shoulder at them, and she looks right through Erin like she’s a ghost. Worse, like she’s not there at all.

Erin forgot how that stare feels.

She stands abruptly, hand clenched around her purse strap.

Louella touches her arm. “Erin…”

“I’m going to talk to her,” Erin says, stepping past her aunt before she can stop her.

She marches down the church aisle. Her mother watches her approach, disinterest plain on her face.

As soon as Erin gets within a few feet, she can already smell the booze. Her hands shake and she tightens her grip on her purse.

“Fantastic,” Margaret says loudly.

Erin keeps her voice low. “You’re drunk.”

“Leave me alone, Erin.”

“You’re drunk,” Erin repeats, “at Dad’s funeral. You need help, Mom.”

Margaret staggers back a step. “Excuse me? What did you just say to me?”

“I said,” Erin says quietly, “that you should get some help.”

“How _dare_ you,” Margaret says, voice getting incrementally louder as her face turns red. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I—”

“Showing up for the first time in _years_ to tell me how to live my fucking life? What the fuck are you even doing here? You think he wanted you here? He _never_ asked about you _once_. He didn’t give a _shit_ about you.”

“I’m here for _me_ ,” Erin says through gritted teeth.

Everyone is listening to them now. Her mother is full-on shouting.

“Go back to whatever fucking place you’re moping around wasting oxygen nowadays. This should be your fucking funeral, not his.”

Erin looks up at the ceiling and taps her foot to keep from crying.

“You know what, Mom,” she says, swallowing hard as she looks back at her, “that’s my mistake. I’ll make sure not to come to yours, alright?”

Then she turns, and she walks, and she keeps walking even as her mom is shouting after her that she never wants to see her again in her life, and she walks to her car, and she gets in her car, and she drives, and she keeps driving until she’s out of the state, and she never, never lets herself cry.

 

_2060_

Laura sidles up to Erin in the doorframe of the living room of Dana’s house in Ann Arbor.

“Did you hear yet?” Laura asks quietly.

Erin watches across the room. Dana’s twins are running around and screaming in typical four-year-old fashion. Will is standing by the window with his husband. On the couch, Dana is sitting beside Jillian, who’s cradling their newest granddaughter. Dana named her Jillian Rebecca Holtzmann. Erin cried when she heard.

“Yes,” Erin says, not taking her eyes off the couch. “I wasn’t going to say anything today. It’s not the time.”

Laura waits.

“They’ve ruled out enough now to make the diagnosis,” Erin says, voice strained.

Laura bows her head. “Alzheimer’s,” she says in a small voice. Not a question.

Over on the couch, Dana reaches over to adjust the baby’s pacifier.

Jillian holds her granddaughter, her legacy, and looks lost. She meets Erin’s gaze with wide, confused eyes.

“Yes,” Erin says, answering Laura.

And it’s going to strip away everything that Jillian is. Her memory—that eternal memory of hers—gone. Her beautiful, incredible mind—shrunken to nothing.

Erin turns and walks away.

 

_2003_

The door slides open behind Holtzmann. She doesn’t turn her head.

“You know I hate when you sit there,” Abby says.

Holtzmann is perched up on the balcony railing, feet dangling. They’re on the fifth floor. She takes a swig from the liquor bottle in her left hand and wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist.

“I know,” she says. “You know how I know? You’ve told me on five different occasions. I could tell you the dates. I could tell you what I was wearing. I could tell you what _you_ were wearing. I could tell you exact words of my responses, but I’m sure you remember those, too, because I always say—”

“‘ _You worry too much_ ,’” Abby says.

Holtzmann lifts her bottle without looking back.

Abby comes and stands beside her, leaning her elbows on the railing.

“I think that not wanting you to die because you drunkenly fell off a balcony is a perfectly reasonable thing,” she says. “You’re not indestructible, Ji—Holtzmann.”

Holtzmann doesn’t respond to that.

“Why can’t I forget, Abby?” she says instead.

“Forget what?”

“ _Anything_.” Holtzmann takes another long swig from her bottle. “I can’t forget a single. goddamn. thing. I should be allowed to forget shit. Why can’t I just be fucking normal?”

“Even normal people have stuff they’d like to forget about. You’re not special.”

“You know what I mean,” Holtzmann huffs.

“No, I actually don’t. You don’t think I wish I could forget about her, too?”

Holtzmann’s insides burn. “Abby…”

Abby continues. “You don’t think I wish I could just—” she snaps her fingers— “forget about all of it?”

Holtzmann licks her lips. “You don’t understand. I can remember every second of my entire goddamn life. Every moment with her. I can never escape it.”

“Maybe you should stop trying to, then.”

“But—”

“Enough. I _really_ don’t want to deal with this crap anymore.”

“Good thing I’m moving to Boston in a month, then,” Holtzmann mutters.

“Oh, don’t even go there. It’s hard to have any sympathy for you when you’re acting like a jackass and risking your life just to be dramatic. Get off the goddamn railing. I’m going inside. I’m not going to watch you die today.”

With that, Abby storms away.

Holtzmann watches someone walk past on the sidewalk across the street. A car alarm sounds somewhere nearby.

She stays there a minute longer, and then she climbs down from the railing and goes back inside.

 

_2063_

It happens so fast, yet so slow.

Erin marks the milestones of the steady decline and waits. She waits for the inevitable day when Jillian will forget her, too.

She tells her about everything. All the memories. All the times they shared. She tells her their story. She wishes and hopes and prays that if she tells Jillian their story enough times, she won’t forget.

Sometimes someone else is there in the room. Sometimes it’s Abby. Sometimes another friend. Sometimes one of the kids. Sometimes the grandkids. Sometimes it’s one of the nurses who comes to take care of Jillian, to help her eat and move and use the bathroom, none of which she can do by herself anymore.

No matter who’s in the room, Erin tells their story. She tells of the love they’ve shared for one another, the way the universe brought them together, the way it was written in the stars. She tells of their meeting—and of all the times they found each other again after that.

She tells their story, and she hopes someone will remember it.

 

_1993_

“Are you scared of dying?”

They’re in Cabin 13. Jillian is lying with her head in Erin’s lap. It’s Jillian who asked the question.

_Yes,_ Erin wants to say.

She stares out at the stars through the small slatted window and thinks about death.

She thinks about her neighbour, peeled off the face of the earth like a scab only to return, shrieking and mottled, intent on torturing an eight-year-old girl even after death.

She thinks about how sometimes she wishes her parents would die together in a fiery car wreck, but the thought of them being dead scares her even more than the sound of her father’s footsteps or her mother’s voice.

She thinks about how sometimes she holds her breath just because, and sometimes she dunks her head under her bath water and dares herself to stay there, and sometimes she stands on the second-floor landing in her school and she looks over the edge and watches her classmates walk around below.

She thinks about how she could never be alive if Jillian weren’t alive.

She is not scared of dying, she realizes.

She is scared of death.

“No,” she answers, “are you?”

“No,” Jillian says instantly. “My mom said that when we die, the universe carries us home.”

 

_2066_

It’s January. She’s eighty-four years old. Erin holds her hand. Laura, Will, and Dana are there. Luke is there. Abby is there.

Erin ignores them all.

It’s only her and Jillian.

She leans in close. Presses her lips shakily to her forehead. Rests her ear lightly against her chest to listen to her heartbeat.

“I love you,” she whispers as she pulls back to get a good look at her.

“Love you,” Jillian slurs.

She opens her eyes, eyes the colour of oceans, and in them, Erin sees everything. Her whole universe, her whole life, wrapped up in Jillian from the beginning. She sees her at seven, rounding a shelf in the Battle Creek library, all messy hair and missing teeth. At eleven, kissing her in a forest while the world explodes around them. At fifteen, skin and bones, scars and breaks, ready to feel love again. At nineteen, tangled up in Erin’s sheets, giving everything and expecting nothing in return. At twenty-five, hunched at the front of a classroom, face dark and attitude darker. At thirty-five, embracing another woman on a college campus and breaking something that Erin hadn’t known existed. At thirty-seven, dancing under a canopy of lights and promising forever. At thirty-eight, bringing their family together, all light and strength and love. At forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, the same and yet not the same, changing, slipping, dissolving into someone unrecognizable and yet—

Here she is.

She’s Jillian, Erin’s Jillian, and when she looks at her, she sees everything she’s ever been.

Jillian may not remember, but Erin will.

“I love you,” she says again.

“Find me,” Jillian says, clearer than anything she’s uttered in years.

And then she leaves.

 

_1992_

“Where are you going, baby?”

Jillian pauses, one hand on the door and the other on her patchwork bag, and looks back down the hallway at her mom. “Ummmmm…the library.”

“Again?” her mom says with a soft smile. “You just went yesterday.”

Jillian shrugs. “I wanna learn more about nuclear fission.”

“You just can’t get enough of that science, can you, baby?”

Jillian licks her lips and twists the doorknob. “Nope.”

“You know, Mark heard about this fantastic program from someone at work. It’s a summer camp a few hours away. Five weeks long and it’s for kids who love science. Would you want to do something like that this summer?”

That gets Jillian to pause for a moment. “Science camp?” She considers that. Would it be cool? Probably. But how could she leave Battle Creek during the summer? The summer is when she’s most likely to find Erin.

“It sounds like an amazing experience,” her mom continues. “Do you want to talk about it more when you get back?”

Jillian nods. “Yeah. When I get back.”

Her mom smiles. “Have fun at the library. I’m proud of you, baby. I know reading isn’t your favourite.”

Jillian smiles weakly in return and finally manages to escape, slipping out the front door before her mom can say anything else.

She runs most of the way there, slowing only when she gets to the steps. This is where it gets tricky.

She barely makes it a few feet inside before Librarian Ethel descends on her.

“Hey! What did I tell you about coming back here?”

Jillian stops and huffs. “That I couldn’t. That’s illegal, though. This is a public place.”

“You’re defacing books.”

“Leaving pieces of paper inside books isn’t bothering anyone!”

“You can either leave the library, or you can leave your bag up at the desk while you’re here.”

Jillian crosses her arms. “How am I supposed to carry the books I wanna check out?”

“Your arms are good for more than pouting,” Ethel snaps.

“Just like librarians are good for more than yelling at kids who just want to read?”

Ethel points at the checkout desk. “Bag. Now. Or leave.”

“Fine,” Jillian grumbles, letting her patchwork bag slide off her shoulder and handing it to Ethel. “Everything better be exactly as I left it when I get it back.”

Ethel rolls her eyes and walks away.

Jillian waits until she’s a few aisles away before turning and smirking. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a stack of folded slips of paper and hums quietly to herself as she skips towards Natural Science.

 

_2066_

“Mom—”

“I’m _fine_ ,” Erin says as she shuts the fridge door. “Please stop worrying about me.”

Dana is leaning against the kitchen counter. Erin tries hard not to see Jillian in her.

“You keep saying that, but—”

“I’m fine,” Erin repeats. She takes a seat at the kitchen table across from Laura, who’s holding her grandson, Cory. Ken and his husband’s first child. Erin’s first great-grandchild. He was born last month. They weren’t able to meet him before—

“You don’t need to lie,” Laura says. “Maybe you feel like you have to pretend for everyone else out there, but you don’t have to for us.”

“I’m not pretending,” Erin says with a sigh. “She’s not gone.”

The two of them exchange a look across the kitchen.

“Mom…”

“I dedicated my life’s work to this,” Erin says. “She’s out there. I just have to find her.”

“And if you don’t?” Dana asks in a pained voice.

“I’ll find her,” Erin says. “I always have before.”

At that moment, June comes running into the kitchen with Jillian Rebecca piggybacking on her.

“Hey, no running,” Dana says. “Where’s your brother?”

“Outside with Uncle Will,” June says.

“Seriously? It's freezing out there,” Dana says.

Jillian Rebecca slides off her back and skips over to Erin. “Grandma, I’m hungry.”

“There’s food in the living room, dear,” Erin says. She reaches out to smooth down the six-year-old’s hair and swallows the lump in her throat. She reminds Erin so much of Jillian when she was a kid. It’s the toothy smile. And her eyes. They have the same eyes.

“Can you come with me?” Jillian Rebecca asks eagerly.

“Of course,” Erin says. She uses the table to help push herself up, steadying herself for a moment before she lets Jillian Rebecca take her by the hand and lead her from the kitchen.

The living room is packed tight with people. Dana’s partner Cam touches her on the shoulder as she passes. Laura’s daughter, Renae, looks up from where she’s talking to her fiancé and gives Erin a sad smile. Over by the door, Carl Lund nods at her.

Erin helps pile some food on a paper plate for Jillian Rebecca and then sets her up on the couch beside Patty, who gives Erin a reassuring pat on the arm.

Everyone in the room is watching her with sympathetic looks, and Erin can’t handle it anymore. She hurries out of the room as fast as her bad knee will let her go, and heads into the hallway. She barely makes it two steps before the front door opens and a familiar figure comes inside.

Erin’s heart falls as she steps closer, stretching out her hand.

Amber reaches her and envelops her in a shaky hug. Neither one of them say anything.

When Amber finally pulls back, her face holds everything that Erin has been feeling for the past few days.

Amber knows.

Amber knows what it was like to love her.

But Amber also knows that she’s not gone.

Erin lets her join the others in the living room, and she heads back down the hall in the direction of the kitchen. She pauses just outside the entrance.

“—has got to be unhealthy,” Laura is saying. “She’s not letting herself grieve.”

“She’s eighty-five years old,” Dana says quietly. “Let her believe whatever she needs to believe to get through this.”

“I know. I’m not going to tell her otherwise. It just makes me sad.”

Dana sighs. “It makes me sad too,” she says.

Erin stares through blurry eyes at the framed wedding photo hanging on the wall in front of her, and then turns and walks away from the kitchen.

 

_1990_

It’s recess and they’re in their Spot, lying on their stomachs on the field.

“Look,” Jillian says, pushing her notebook across the grass towards Erin. “Whaddya think?”

Erin barely glances at the drawing. “She didn’t look like that.”

“It’s not supposed to be her. It’s just a random ghost.”

Erin doesn’t look away from her book. “Ghosts don’t look like that, though. They look like people.”

“You’re no fun.” Jillian pulls the notebook back in front of her. She hums and kicks her feet in the air as she continues to draw. “Wouldn’t it be cool to be a ghost?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Whaaat? Come on! You could fly around and spy on people and you wouldn’t ever have to worry about dying because you’d already be dead and you could scare people who you hate and—”

“Nobody deserves to be scared by a ghost,” Erin says firmly.

“Alright, fine, no scaring. You could just hang out and do whatever you want! You could travel all over the world and see every place on the planet.”

“That’s not how it works!”

“How do you know how it works?”

“Because if everyone could become a ghost, then we’d see ghosts everywhere all the time.”

Jillian frowns and shades around her ghost drawing’s eyes. “Well, I don’t care. I’m gonna be a ghost one day.”

“No you’re not.”

“You can’t stop me. Just you wait and see, Erin.” At the distant sound of the bell ringing, Jillian pushes herself up from the ground and grabs her notebook, tucking it under her arm. She helps Erin up, too, and they start to walk back in the direction of the school. “I’m going to do the opposite of haunt you. Nice-haunt you. Foreverrrrr. You’re never gonna get rid of me.”

 

_2066_

There’s a knock on the front door just as Erin is pulling her coat on to leave. She freezes for a moment, hand trembling as she reaches for the doorknob.

She wouldn’t knock. Would she?

The door opens to reveal Abby.

“Oh,” Erin says. “It’s you.”

Abby raises an eyebrow as she hobbles past Erin into the foyer. “Who else would drop by mid-week without phoning ahead of time?”

Erin ignores her and knots a red and brown scarf around her neck. Patty sent it from New York. She didn’t knit it herself—she’s made it clear that the day she takes up knitting is the day she’ll die.

“I was just about to step out,” Erin says.

“Where? I’ll come.”

“Nowhere. You should just come back. Tea later?”

“Erin.”

Erin ushers Abby out onto the porch and locks the front door behind them. “I’m sorry you came all this way. You know what I say about phoning ahead of time.”

“You should be sorry. I think that two-block walk is what’s finally going to do me in.”

“Abby,” Erin says quietly, voice strained.

“Where are you going?”

Erin doesn’t meet Abby’s eyes. “Library,” she mumbles.

There’s a moment of silence.

“I don’t know what you expect to find there—”

“It’s none of your business what I do with my days.”

Across the porch, there’s a clattering noise as a rake that was leaning up against the side of the house falls over. Erin’s head snaps to look in that direction and her heart stops.

“It’s not her,” Abby says.

Erin’s knobbly knuckles clench around her keys. She watches the spot for a moment longer, then looks at Abby, anger burning through her.

“Who are _you_ to throw out the possibility that—”

“It was the _wind_ , Erin.”

“Let me _have_ this, Abby,” Erin shouts coarsely. Her eyes sting. “It’s been three months. Let me _have_ this.”

Abby looks at her feet, face pale. It’s silent except for the wind gusting through the porch.

“I’m sorry,” Abby says finally. “Go to the library. I’ll come back later.”

Erin grips the strap of her purse and nods. “Thank you,” she says tightly.

Abby’s voice echoes in her head during the short walk to the library.

_It’s not her_.

Inside, one of the librarians greets her by name. Erin smiles and nods and doesn’t stop walking until she gets to the 500s.

_I don’t know what you expect to find there_.

Neither does Erin.

But she pulls a book at random out from the bottom shelf, and she settles into her armchair to wait for the long haul.

 

_1989_

Jillian sighs loudly and slams her screwdriver down on the kitchen table. She pushes her glasses up onto the top of her head and crosses her arms, glaring at the mess in front of her.

“Why won’t you work?” she asks it.

The tape recorder doesn’t answer, just keeps playing _[If I Could Turn Back Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsKbwR7WXN4)_  backwards.

She stares at it for a moment longer and then scrapes back her chair. She grabs her patchwork bag from its hook by the door and shoves her feet inside her favourite black and yellow gumboots. She likes the stomping noise they make, which is why she wears them even when it’s not raining.

She makes sure to lock the apartment door—her mom is at her job at the Kellogg’s factory—and then sets off down the hallway.

If her mom was here, she’d tell her to stop dragging her feet. Jillian can’t help it, though. She’s about to do something that she hates doing, that she usually avoids at all costs.

She’s going to the library.

 

_2070_

Erin celebrates four more birthdays, nearly five.

She expects it, even welcomes it. She is ready.

She closes her eyes.

 

She opens her eyes.

On either side of her, familiar bookshelves stretch as far as she can see.

“Finally,” a voice says behind her, “I’ve been waiting forever.”

And Erin is home.

 

 

 


End file.
